tied him to a tree like saint sebastian

[lotesse]

two questions about the Vorkosigan Saga:

1. how does swearing someone work in terms of the armsmans' score/Vorloupulous' law? When Miles swears Arde and Baz in - when Mark swears Elena - do those count as additions to the number of Vorkosigan Armsmen? Because neither boy acts as though a slot needs to be open before a swearing can happen, on penalty of high treason. Is there a textual explanation, or is it a crack in the narrative?

2. Why, when Bujold so obviously understands why aspects of Miles' courtship of Ekaterin are really borderline in terms of acceptable behavior, does she choose to have the story go down that way? There are all of these words about how Ekaterin needs some time, some confidence, some space - Bujold clearly does get it, at some level. Does she just not care? Why was it necessary for her to write the story about Miles pushing Ekaterin's consent and disrespecting her boundaries and still getting her to marry him in the end?

It would have been really cool if it had gone the other way, actually been a healthy and functional romance all the time, instead of just some of the time.

Comments

[staranise]

1. I wonder if it's twenty people per Vor, rather than per family?

2. I only just realized this, but ACC is a huge homage to Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, in which a similar courtship takes place over months and years. I think LMB wanted to preserve the basic story of "man pursues a woman who believes she is broken and no longer eligible for love; realizes he can't 'fix' or 'save' her, is humbled, and apologizes handsomely; she is inspired to pursue him, and they all live happily ever after." However, she tried to fit it into a too-compressed timeline.

[lotesse]

1. So are the official Vorwhatsis Armsmens' score sworn to the current count, then? Because I don't know that canon matches that; armsmen seem to be inherited along with the countship. I think they must be doubly-sworn, "Armsman Simple" indicating personal loyalty and "Vorwhatsis Armsman" indicating a place in the official score and an additional oath.

2. I've never read Sayers - is she worth it, or am I just going to be driven round the bend?

[ithiliana]

Early Sayers is less interesting than later Sayers -- I love later Sayers, and even most of her earlier stuff (with a couple of exceptions). the later Sayers has Harriet Vane (and Gaudy Night is one of two books I took--along with Virginia Woolf's ROOM--when I did a study abroad term at oxford), and I love Harriet Vane (who writes murder mysteries). (Tolkien disliked Sayers' work immensely!)

[princessofgeeks]

Sayers is worth it. Full stop. Start with Murder Must Advertise.

[staranise]

1. Oooh, I like that explanation. It makes "Armsman Simple" make sense--"Armsman [Complex]" would be the inherited ones.

2. They're detective novels set and written in the 1920s, starring an English aristocrat who affects to be an overbred flibbertigibbet, but is in fact a WWI veteran with PTSD who solves crimes. (You can very much see Miles' foundations in him.) I tolerate him and his silliness for HARRIET VANE (sorry *ahem*) a writer and Oxford graduate who is brittle, defensive as all fuck, and severely in need of someone who can wrap her in a blanket and give her hot cocoa not that she would take it. Peter and Harriet's relationship is the mold Miles and Ekaterin are cast in.

However, once or twice a novel there are glaringly anti-Semitic bits that seem stuck there just for fun, and it is a fly in my ointment.

Should you wish to read only one, Gaudy Night is the middle book and contains the fewest racist remarks (I can't remember any, but I might've missed one) while the complete progression I'd recommend is Strong Poison - Gaudy Night - Busman's Honeymoon. I didn't read any others.

[oursin]

Have His Carcase comes immediately after Strong Poison and has their relationship developing as they fight crime.

[legionseagle]

Crime carried out by total incompetents - I think the only reason it manages to remain undetected for several hundred pages is first n pbzcyrgryl enaqbz snpgbe gung gur zheqreref pbhyq unir unq ab onfvf sbe fhfcrpgvat and secondly that I suspect Peter and Harriet couldn't lower their intellects to the level of sheer stupidity displayed by everyone in sight and kept trying to think of sensible explanations for the apparent sequence of events.

[oursin]

The reason it remains undetected is to give the Peter/Harriet relationship time to develop is probably the explanation? (i.e. extraneous authorial edict)

The racist remark in Gaudy Night

[legionseagle]

"Wot this country needs is an 'itler." Said, however, by a sympathetic character who is trying to get an unsympathetic (and misogynistic) character to do an emergency job of reversing an act of sabotage which has been aimed to do maximum damage to a women's college, so it's probably a pose.

[aella_irene]

With Ekaterin, what I end up muttering is that there isn't a Have His Carcase, and there needs to be one, because Have His Carcase features Harriet discovering that she can be a detective on her own, and it is nice to have Peter around. Also, it means that there is three or four years between Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, and Harriet and Peter need that time, and so do Miles and Ekaterin.

[princessofgeeks]

IAWT